Ken Borland

Triumphant Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus said Argentina are a tough side to crack and his team had to first make them soft up front, setting up their emphatic 48-7 win in Mbombela, which also sealed the Rugby Championship title for South Africa.

Although the Springboks scored seven tries, four of them going to backs, the platform for victory, following their 29-28 defeat in Argentina last weekend, was laid up front. South Africa utterly dominated the scrums and won all 10 of their lineouts.

“The manner we are trying to play may be more attacking, but we still want to be physical, have scrum dominance and our lineout worked very well tonight too. It made them tired trying to stop our tight five all the time, it was a bit like slow poison.

“It was a learning school for us last week, but I didn’t expect that sort of scoreline tonight because Argentina are very difficult to play against. Things were really tight in the beginning and they kept us out. But we didn’t want to stand back, it was all about temperament and leadership for us.

“We’ve used 35 players in the Rugby Championship, but for those crunch games it’s the older heads who pull us through. It was not spectacular by us, but we showed good intent. Argentina are physical, nippy and great on attack. Jerry Flannery [defence coach] was very nervous before the game but we kept them to just one try.

“We were gutsy enough, we played brilliantly at stages, much better than we did against them that side. It wasn’t perfect, but there was some really good stuff to build on,” Erasmus said after South Africa won the Rugby Championship for the first time since 2019.

While Argentina were able to keep the dominant Springboks out for the first eight minutes, they were unable to keep in touch thereafter as South Africa romped to a 27-7 lead at halftime.

“The heartbreak is because of how we lost,” Pumas coach Felipe Contepomi said. “We were never able to be the team we wanted to be, and then it becomes very hard when you play a team that has won the World Cup twice. They were better than us from minute one to 80 and that’s the story.

“I recognise that our players kept battling hard and working to get back, but we did not do what we wanted to do, especially in terms of defence. It is disappointing but it is part of learning – how to be better when under pressure. You need to stay poised and believe in what you’ve done in training,” Contepomi said.

DULLSTROOM (Mpumalanga) – Vodacom Bulls legend Akona Ndungane is clearly comfortable with change and, having mastered the gales around Highland Gate Golf and Trout Estate, he turned his attention to rugby and said it was no surprise Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus has not just massaged his starting line-up for their second Rugby Championship Test against Australia but made a massive 10 changes to the run-on XV.

Ndungane is an avid golfer who plays off a five handicap, but playing in the Vodacom Origins of Golf Pro-Am Series is a first for the 43-year-old. It was also the first time he has played at Highland Gate, the 6717m course perched 2000m above sea level in the valleys and mountains of the Steenkampsberge. And then to make the challenge even more daunting, the wind blew at 30km/h on the first day of the pro-am.

“This is the first Vodacom Origins of Golf Pro-Am I’ve played in and it’s wonderful,” Ndungane said. “I love golf, both watching it and playing, and to be around the pros is really special. Just to be here at this beautiful course is amazing, especially for me, being my first time playing here.

“What an experience, especially with the wind blowing so hard it felt like the Western Cape or a coastal course. But our pros, Cara Gorlei and Keenan Davdise, were great company and I got to play with my mate OG Molefe. So it was a great outing, and we managed to lead after the first round.

“When conditions are tough, the quality comes through because you have to be more focused. If you hit it in the rough, then it was very tough, even to just try and find your ball. But the greens are firm and nice,” the former Springbok wing said.

Quality is also something the 2007 Rugby World Cup winner sees in the Springbok set-up at the moment. Ndungane believes the squad has advanced well in the development of their more attacking game, allowing Erasmus more flexibility in selection ahead of Saturday’s match against the Wallabies in Perth.

“In a way I expected that sort of start last week because we have seen the game-plan they are trying to implement. Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu is in amazing form and starting at flyhalf allows him to free himself, to express himself. They all seem to be really enjoying their rugby at the moment.

“They beat Australia 33-7, but the Wallabies were fortunate not to concede fifty points the way the Springboks dominated first phase, defence and attack. Those yellow cards at the end helped them.

“But it’s no surprise Dr Rassie has made so many changes. He’s trying to build depth and give players quality opportunities to see if they can cope. When you’re in a good place then you’re able to make changes. And I don’t think this team is really any weaker than last weekend’s.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing Lukhanyo Am playing at 12. We saw how good he was in his comeback against Portugal, even though injury has unfortunately slowed him down a bit. It’s an exciting combination in the backline with Sacha, Lukhanyo and Jesse Kriel playing together,” Ndungane said.

Bloemfontein (July 20, 2024) – South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus said improving their discipline would be a pivotal part of their focus in the Rugby Championship after they beat Portugal 64-21 in their one-off Test in Bloemfontein on Saturday, despite playing with 14 men from the third minute and with 13 players for 16 minutes.

Centre Andre Esterhuizen was given an early yellow card for head-on-head contact after a crunching tackle on Jose’ Lima sent the Portuguese No.13 off the field with a concussion. Esterhuizen’s yellow card was later upgraded to a red by the television match official.

The Springboks also had wing Kurt-Lee Arendse yellow-carded in the 34^th minute for a dangerous clear-out at a ruck, and debutant replacement fullback Quan Horn was also sent to the sin-bin after playing an opponent in the air in the 74^th minute.

“Discipline is something we will need to look at after getting a red card so early. We had nearly 20 minutes with 13 men and the rest with 14, and obviously we won’t win World Cups like that. So that is something we will focus on. The incidents were all accidents, they weren’t things the players did on purpose.

“But we had to adapt to having 14 or 13 men, so that is a good thing. You get to learn the character of the players in matches like this. We had Duane Vermeulen next to the field and Gerry Flannery was planning how to defend without a blindside wing or a centre. On the field, the players can get rattled or stay calm, so there were big learnings from that tonight,” Erasmus said.

Conceding 10 tries but scoring three themselves was no disgrace for Portugal in their first meeting with South Africa, and their coach Simon Mannix said he could not have been more proud of his team.

“The lessons were enormous tonight and we were monstered in a lot of areas. The physicality of the Springboks was something else and the players felt it was two or three levels higher than what they experienced in the 2023 World Cup.

“I’m not naïve, I know it was a South Africa B team we played against, but they played some really good rugby, they have great athletes. We were beaten up at the breakdown and in a lot of areas, but we showed a lot of courage. I could not be more proud of the boys.

“We will learn and get better, but I’m very proud of the way we tried to play some rugby, especially in the first 10 minutes. We showed we can move the ball and go wide. This was an historic event and I hope the players will remember those first 10 minutes, we showed we were here to play and what we can do, we exposed them on the outside, which I was delighted about.

“We learnt so much about ourselves tonight, you can’t look at it negatively. There’s a huge gulf between No.15 and No.1 in the world. One of my players is in the fifth division in France and tonight he started against the Springboks. We have no full-time pros, but we have incredible spirit,” Mannix said.

South Africa kick off their Rugby Championship campaign against Australia in Brisbane on August 10.

So near and yet so far is probably an apt summation of the Springboks’ Rugby Championship campaign, and there is a lingering feeling that Jacques Nienaber’s team are still not playing to their true potential and are still not ruthless enough when it comes to translating dominance to points on the scoreboard.

And their next opponents, on November 5 and 12 respectively, are Ireland in Dublin and France in Marseille. Those are the top two sides in the world rankings and then we will have a better idea of whether South Africa are genuine World Cup contenders or just also-rans in a southern hemisphere competition that is no longer the gold standard of international rugby.

Having hammered the All Blacks in Nelspruit on the opening weekend, the Springboks really only have themselves to blame for not winning the Rugby Championship for just the fifth time.

Their first misjudgement lies squarely on Nienaber (and maybe director of rugby Rassie Erasmus) for not choosing the best XV to play New Zealand the following weekend at Ellis Park. The All Blacks were in disarray and ripe for the taking after their 26-10 defeat at Mbombela Stadium. When your greatest rivals are on their knees, you don’t experiment and give them a helping hand, you ruthlessly turn the knife and ensure they sack their coach mid-competition.

Instead, Ian Foster’s men bounced back with an impressive win, the ship was steadied and, despite an historic first loss at home to Argentina, they were worthy winners of the Rugby Championship.

Having lost to the Pumas 25-18 in Christchurch, New Zealand then thrashed them 53-3 the following weekend in Hamilton, the result that ultimately won them the title, because it left the Springboks needing a bonus point and turning around a big points differential in the final round to claim the silverware.

It is that kind of ruthlessness, the ability to really put opposition away, that the Springboks lack. The last time they scored 40 points in the Rugby Championship, never mind winning by a margin of 39, was back in August 2019 against Argentina.

I get that Test matches cannot always be like a commercial for open, running rugby, but the great sides are able to leverage dominance and make it reflect on the scoreboard. And there have been periods when the Springboks have enjoyed an absolute monopoly on momentum, but just did not have the execution or intent to make it count.

In the last match against Argentina, I would have liked to have seen the Springboks try and play some expansive rugby. They had nothing to lose – even if they lost, they still would have finished second.

But with crash-ball centres at numbers 10 and 12 and the creativity of Lukhanyo Am missed at outside centre, the Springboks still just relied on their usual formula of scoring from set-pieces and rolling mauls.

They were not helped by a referee, Damon Murphy, who was determined to be in the middle of the limelight. If you are going to steal the show, at least make sure you are competent, but Murphy and his officiating team made a series of terrible decisions that robbed South Africa of momentum.

From winning the World Cup in 2019, the Springboks no longer seem to be the leaders of the pack. I don’t see much growth, especially in terms of their attacking play, since those heady days in Japan. The opposition will have had four years to work out how to blunt South Africa’s forward-based, strangling game of stout defence and contestable kicking, and the Boks better have more strings to their bow if they hope to defend their title.

Perhaps Nienaber, an inexperienced head coach maybe in Erasmus’s shadow, has tried too hard to prove he is the man and is too prescriptive in terms of the style of play. While throttling the opposition has worked, one wonders if the Springboks are not strangling their own potential in the process?

Let’s hope they express themselves more in Europe.